Well, I see everyone is standing. You know, in the southern part of the United States, we used to not have air conditioning in the churches. But the thing, the way we air conditioned the churches is the funeral parlors in town would provide fans. And we'd have these fans, you know, that had something that looks like a popsicle stick, just a piece of flat wood, and then a piece of cardboard shaped like that. And it would have the funeral home advertisement. own it, and everybody would be fanning with these fans. And so during the service, everyone's got a fan, and it's just perpetual motion out there. It makes the preacher dizzy. But if you're fanning during the time, I will understand. I may fan a little bit myself. But I have, again, I want to express my appreciation to the leaders and constructors of the conference for inviting me to come. It's been a wonderful experience and I want to thank each of you for your friendship and your hospitality. I wish I could have visited with each one of you personally. I did get to visit with some of you and it was a delightful experience. The genuineness of the welcome you have given and the genuineness of your love for the Lord and the Your growth in grace and all of these have been a great inspiration and a challenge to me, and I thank you for it, and I thank the Lord Jesus for it. Tonight I want us to focus our attention on one verse of Scripture that is found in Paul's first letter that we have in Scripture here to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16, verse 22. 1 Corinthians 16, 22. Paul, in writing a few short sentences at the end of this letter, 21, said, I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, and then says, if anyone does not love the Lord, a curse Be on him. Come, O Lord." Now the King James Version leaves those words untranslated. If anyone loved not the Lord, anathema, maranatha. Now this seems to be a rather severe, un-evasive statement. He does not use some of the gracious circumlocutions that he uses in other places, but he states it straightforwardly that there is something eternal at stake, there is something infinite at stake, and there is something that lays ultimate claim on our lives that falling short of it results in infinite ruin. If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him. Come, O Lord." Now, I want us to look, first of all, as we consider this, at the rationality of this conditional statement. That it is something, once we understand all that is in the verse, is exactly the right kind of thing. It is the kind of thing that should be said. It's what we should expect. Now the world would never expect any kind of verdict to be passed on a person, that severe a verdict to be passed on a person, because of, from anything. Everything is relative. There's nothing that is really worth getting that excited about. And it is just some sort of a an example of a person who is very narrow-minded and who does not understand the complexities of the world and does not understand the way different cultures develop and doesn't understand the various types of personalities and certainly must have some sort of a paranoid personality to be that afraid of opposing viewpoints, for someone simply to pronounce a curse on someone who will not do one thing. If anyone loved not the Lord, a curse be on him. Those who would jump to a conclusion that this is a rather narrow way of thinking simply do not understand all that is in this conditional statement. If anyone does not love the Lord, why should one love the Lord? I can remember a time when people talked a lot about loving the Lord. And I went through a time in my life when I thought that was sort of a... I started to use the word and I'm sure it's colloquial. It was a hokey way of speaking. Do you understand what hokey means? To talk about loving the Lord sounded sort of hokey. Well, I was the one who was hokey. I was the one who didn't understand what was being said. And this phrase, to love the Lord, is not something that is trite. It's not something that is shallow. It's not just sort of a catch-all phrase. It is a convenient way to speak when you run out of anything else to say. But it is that which catches the very essence of what our existence should be, to love the Lord. Why should we love the Lord? Why is this conditional statement that Paul gives with such a severe consequence completely rational and understandable if we look at it right? Well, first of all, we could review some of the things that we have already said. It is right to love the Lord because of the glory of His person. If we were to look at His pre-incarnate person, We would see one who is infinitely lovely. We would see one who shares all the attributes and all the glory of God himself because he is equal with God. I think there's some very striking statements in the prayer that Jesus prayed immediately before he went into Gethsemane as he prayed for his disciples and all of those who would believe on him because of the witness of the disciples. In the 17th chapter of the book of John, verse 5, the Lord says, And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. Glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." Jesus, as he prays this, reflects upon a condition that existed before anything else came into existence, a glory that the Father and Son shared with each other as he addresses him now, Father, glorify me. not any diminishing of beauty and power and knowledge from father to son. What the son had, the father had. And every attribute that the father had, the son had. In the same way that the father was infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and perfect in every attribute that he had, so was the son. In the same way that the Father knew Himself thoroughly and therefore has all knowledge because He knows Himself who is infinite, so the Son knows Himself and knows the Father. All of the glory, the weight, this word glory comes from a word which means weight, which comes to mean something as it is in itself. All that it consists of is its glory. And all that God consists of is the glory of God. All that He is in Himself. And the Son is saying that before the creation of the world, before anything else came into existence, He enjoyed, He shared all that God was. It was through Him that creation came, as we have looked at that. It was through Him, it is through Him that creation maintains its existence in providence. It is through Him that everything continues to exist. It is through Him that those who have been given to the Son are actually brought to know the Father. They only know the Father through the Son. Jesus said, He that has seen me has seen the Father. If we know everything that we can know about Jesus, then we will know the Father. He is, in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. All that God is, all that the Godhead is in bodily form, there it was in Jesus. He is infinitely lovely. Every perfection that exists, He had in Himself before the creation of the world and even in bodily form. He continued to have it, though the external brilliance of it was hidden for the sake of not destroying sinners upon their seeing it. In the 24th verse of this same chapter, he says, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Now this glory, this glory that you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world, appears to be an added dimension of glory. There is a glory that the apostles could not see, but there is a glory that He has gained that has now been given to the Son as a result of His having completed the work that the Father gave Him to do, as a result of His coming to the point now of offering Himself as a sacrifice. And with the resurrection in His glorified humanity, there will be a glory, not that in any sense can add to or can augment the glory of the Son that He had before the creation of the world, but there will be a different kind of glory that is there also. The disciples will see that. It is a glory that He has given Him because He loved Him before the creation of the world. And so He is to be loved because He shares all the infinite perfections of God, and He is to be loved because the Father loves Him. You loved Me before the creation of the world. He is the Beloved Son. You see, there is not anything about the Lord Jesus Christ that is unlovely. The Father who knows everything perfectly, the Father who has perfect hate, the Father who cannot abide iniquity, loves the Son. Now there are two kinds of love, and I'm sure you are familiar with these, but there is a love that is called benevolent love, and we will discuss that in just a moment, but basically it is a love that arises out of the will, out of the good intentions of the person doing the loving. God's love towards sinners is a benevolent love. There is nothing lovely in us. But for reasons of his own, because of his compassion that arises out of purposes that he has within himself because of the goodness of his own nature, he loves those who are unlovely. That is his benevolent love. But then there's another kind of love that is a complacent love. Now, complacent does not mean non-energetic or apathetic, but it means that it finds pleasure within the one loved. It is that which locates something lovely in the being that is loved. It loves because the being deserves being loved. And the kind of love that the Father has for the Son is a complacent love. The Father who knows everything, who cannot abide iniquity, who sees all things perfectly and knows that which is infinite perfection, looks at the Son and knows the Son thoroughly and knows all of His characteristics and looks at Him and says, He is lovely and He loves the Son. And because God the Father loves the Son, we know that He is infinitely lovely and we should love Him. But we see not only the glory of His person because in His pre-incarnate state that He had glory with the Father before the world was and He was loved by the Father before the world was, but we see we should also love Him because of His incarnate state. the great mystery, the great wisdom that there is in the person of Christ in his incarnate state. In the book of 1 Timothy, chapter 3, Paul expresses something of the wonder and awe of the First Century Church in considering this great event of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to earth. Beginning with verse 15 of 1 Timothy 3, Paul says, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great. He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations. was believed on in the world and was taken up in glory. Now in this, which Paul calls the mystery of godliness, that which was hidden before the foundation of the world but has now been revealed to us as to how God was actually among us, this is something that is seen from the standpoint of what happens on earth And then what happens in heaven? He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. And in all of these things there is a mystery as to how in God and man all of these things occurred simultaneously. These things were happening to God. These things were happening to man. And the mystery and wonder of it is, is that all of these things occurred for the salvation of sinners. And such wisdom that devised a plan for the salvation of man is something that should create great love when we consider it rightly. And so because of the glory of His person, both in the pre-incarnate state and after the incarnation, we should love Him. but also we should love him because of the wonder of his work. Now if we can think, consider the great magnitude of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, of all the things through which he went for the sake of sinners, the wonder of his conception being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and how God himself was in the womb of the Virgin Mary and went through the period of growth in her womb. and how God himself and man in one person was born and lived in subjection to his parents, was born of a woman, born under the law. And after thirty years of living that way, he came and began a public ministry which was characterized by teaching perfectly, by understanding the law, by living a life of obedience to the Father, It led him then to the cross, and on the cross he gave up his soul in offering for sin. He died for his people. He died the just for the unjust. And then in his burial he continued under the power of death for a time. And then in his resurrection, by the power that was resident within him, he was raised from the dead because he said, I give my life and I have power to take it again. Also by the power of the Father he was raised because the Scripture says he was raised by the glory of the Father. Also by the power of the Spirit he was raised, as Ephesians 1 teaches us, the whole triune God being active in his resurrection. and then in the days that he remained upon earth while he taught his disciples, opening up to them the scriptures beginning at Moses and going through all of the prophets, telling them the things concerning himself, and then claiming to have all power given unto him in heaven and earth as he stands before them immediately before the ascension, and simply on the basis of his word giving the disciples authority to go into all nations and preach the gospel. simply because He says they should do it. And that is all the warrant that we need to go everywhere to preach the gospel. We really need the permission of no other person because the Lord Jesus Christ has said, all power is given Me in heaven and in earth. And then the wonder of His ascension where they saw Him go up and then Stephen seeing Him, that first martyr, seeing Him standing at the right hand of the Father, By the revelation of the Spirit, we realize that He now is there at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us. We know that He shall come again. All of these things, the wonder of His work, is something that should cause us to bow before Him in amazement and in genuine love. If any man love not the Lord, we should sing with those who Wroth the great hymn, crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee, and hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity, if any man love not the Lord. But we should also love Him because of the benevolence of His love toward us. Now, this is all the way through the scripture and particularly in the New Testament, how the Lord Jesus Christ has loved us, how he gave himself for us in the book of Romans, that great passage of scripture. that talks about the security that we have in Christ in the eighth chapter beginning with verse 35 after he has talked about how Christ has died for us and given us justification, how the elect have absolutely nothing that they should fear because God has chosen them, has given Christ for them. And then he says in verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ shall tribulation. or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. As it is written, for your sake we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded, I am convinced, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Now what was there in us that called forth His love? Was there anything at all in us that would make Him see us and say, Ah, they are lovely? We know that the entire teaching of the New Testament would be against such a conclusion. He loved us while we were unlovely. God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We love because He first loved us. It is pure, gratuitous, benevolent love. Out of purposes that are within Himself, for our good, He empties Himself of all of that glory, undergoes all of the pain and suffering that human art could invent and could inflict upon Him, as well as the infinite suffering that He endured as a result of being the substitute under the wrath of God for our sins, all for the sake of His love toward us. Now, I do not agree with that the theology, the total theology that is expressed in the verse. But there is a great truth that is caught in that verse in the hymn that we sing often, that Wesley hymn. It says, "'Tis mystery, all the immortal dies who can explore this strange design. In vain the firstborn seraph cried,' that's the wrong verse. How does the one start? It says, "'emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race.' Well, he didn't empty himself of all but love. But we do see a tremendous magnitude of love expressed in the emptying of the Lord Jesus Christ. He emptied himself. Not because there was anything in us that drew this out, not because we were lovely, but because of the great love with which He loved us, Ephesians 2 tells us. Pure, benevolent love, purely gratuitous love poured out upon sinners, enduring all of those things simply because He says, I love you. Now how can that kind of love not draw forth great love from us. We should love Him because of the benevolence of His love. We should love Him also because of the legitimacy of the great command. God has a right to command what He will, and He commands things that are in accord with His character. He commands them in the order in which He sees their importance. And He has told us that the summation of all of the commands is this, the first and most important is, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is right because he commands it. And He commands it because it is really the first thing, the most magnificent thing that should claim all of our powers, all of our creativity, everything that we are should be focused on the One Being that exists eternally, who exists in Himself, who needs nothing outside of Himself. It is investing all of the energies that He has created within us in eternity to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. And then the final reason that I'm going to give why we should love the Lord, the rationality of this conditional statement, is that love is the moral foundation for repentance and faith. Now there may be some that would say, well this seems like a work salvation to say if anyone loved not the Lord, a curse be on him. Because doesn't it just say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved? Or does it say that repentance should be preached for remission of sins? Now how does love sneak in here and begin to usurp the place of repentance and faith? Well, it's because love is the foundation of repentance and faith. Faith is the only appropriate thing that can receive the righteousness of Christ because faith is that attitude that abandons all hope in oneself, that places all one's own righteousness away and counts it as nothing, and that clings to Christ alone for salvation. But such faith could never come unless one began to see in Christ his only hope, unless one began to see in Christ one who was worthy of his affection, one who should be loved, unless one began to see that, I am undone and I am worthy of condemnation because I have not loved him. It is only the opening up of the heart in love that serves as the foundation for true faith. And how can one repent unto the forgiveness of sins if one has not learned to hate his sin? If one has not learned to turn from his sin and mourn from his sin and desire to be delivered from his sin? And you can only desire to be delivered from your sin and turn from your sin and hate your sin and turn back toward God away from your sin if you have seen the awfulness of sin and if you have learned to hate it. But at one time, while you were still in trespasses and sins, you loved it, you walked in that way, all the energy of your life, you invested in that. And it is only that effectual, sovereign working of the Spirit who comes into our hearts and changes our own moral disposition, that work that we call irresistible grace or the effectual calling, that work that is the new birth, that work that is called being raised from death to life, that work that is the new creation that creates a moral basis for true repentance and faith. It is that that distinguishes between devil's faith and true saving faith. Why is it that all that the devils know and all that the devils believe is not saving faith and saving belief? It is because it does not arise out of the moral basis of love for the holiness of God. And only those who have faith that arises out of love for God and repentance that arises out of hate for sin, two manifestations of one moral trait, of one aspect of human activity, of human response to God, only those have this kind of faith and this kind of repentance who have the moral basis of love for holiness. And so we should love the Lord because it is only the only true moral base for repentance and faith. And so there is a rationality to the conditional statement. There are infinite things that are at stake here. There's infinite beauty and infinite wisdom. In the Lord Jesus Christ there is infinite love that He has given to sinners, there is an infinite command that has been given, and there is the moral basis of love that undergirds repentance and faith. If any man love not the Lord. Then the text goes on to state a very severe consequence. If anyone does not love the Lord, anathema. Now what does the word anathema mean? Well, it means literally, anathema, something that is set up. It is set up. It is set apart. It is set out in a conspicuous place. It answers to the Hebrew word haram, which is used to describe anything that is separate and devoted to holy use. It is used of devotive offerings. Luke 21, some of the disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts that were anathema to God. And it simply literally means that were dedicated to God, that were set up to God, that were set aside specifically for the purposes of God. In the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus, chapter 27, lists many different kinds of things that are set up and how you redeem things that should be set apart to God. But we get a good view of the force of this word in verses 28 and 29 of Leviticus 27, where Moses writes, But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the Lord, whether man or animal or family land, may be sold or redeemed. Everything so devoted is most holy to the Lord. No person devoted to destruction, no person anathema in the Septuagint, may be ransomed. He must be put to death. So something that is anathema, something that is set up, is a particular being that is set aside for specific purposes of God. Now, people can anathematize themselves. In Acts 23, verses 12 through 14, we have the case of those who anathematized themselves for the sake of killing Paul. They bound themselves, it says, with a dreadful oath. They bound that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed the apostle Paul. They set themselves up particularly for this purpose. Paul says in Romans 9, 3, for I myself could wish to be anathema from Christ, set up and devoted particularly to destruction from Christ for the sake of my kinsmen, my brethren according to the flesh. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, 3 that no man can say Jesus be anathema by the Spirit of God. And then in Galatians 1, 8 and 9 where he deals with those who were coming into Galatia and were preaching a gospel that differed at strategic points from that which Paul preaches. He says, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be anathema. And it is translated in the New International Version, let him be eternally condemned. As we have already said, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be anathema. And so this word, anathema, is a very severe word. It is a word that speaks about those who are set out, who are set apart for a particular purpose. The same word, but without this prefix, is used in 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, where the Apostle Paul says, We know, brethren, that he has not appointed you unto wrath. He has not set you out for wrath. The ideal is contained in the book of 1 Peter, Chapter 2, when he's speaking about the offense that Christ is, in verse 7 of 1 Peter 2, he says, Now to you who believe, this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, and a stone that causes men to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for. It is what they were appointed for. If anyone loved not the Lord, let him be anathema. Let him be set aside individually as someone who, because of the lack of love for the Lord that he has, will be a display of the great justice and holiness of God in his punishment. It will not be that there is just this great swirling mass in which there is no discernment of individuality. But the word anathema means that it is set apart as one individual example. of a particular wisdom and a particular display of the wrath of God. You see, in eternal punishment there will not simply be some sort of an amorphous display of God's wrath so that individuals lose their personal perception of who they are and so that those who are looking upon them lose any kind of consciousness of the divisions and of the great differences that there may be in the heinousness of the sins that people have committed. No, there will be an eternal display of the precise justice of God in the punishment of every individual who does not love the Lord. Everyone will be set up for the purpose of showing some particular aspect of the great wisdom and glory of God and how His justice is infinitely particular in the punishment of that individual who has not loved the Lord. They will be anathema. They will be set up. And every sinner, as Jonathan Edwards said in one of his sermons, every sinner will wish that he had sinned one less sin. There will be such a discernible difference in the justice that is meted out to every person. All those who do not love the Lord will be anathema, set up. individually set aside for a display of the just wrath of God for not loving the Lord. And the third thing that I want us to see in this text is the certainty of this curse. The certainty of this curse. If any man loves not the Lord, Anathema. Come, O Lord. Now, it's possible that this could be translated in two ways. It could be translated, Come, O Lord. That's the way it usually is translated. It could also be translated, The Lord is come. Now, if it's translated, The Lord is come, it is setting up the certainty of this curse on the basis of the reality of Christ's incarnation and what people should have discerned from this incarnation. One of the clearest passages that deals with that is in the book of John in chapter 3. John 3, beginning with verse 18, we read, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. And then verses 35 and 36. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him. There is a certainty to anathema because the Lord is come. Light has come into the world. Now, even though before the incarnation, there was really no possibility of anyone pleading ignorance because Paul teaches us clearly that God's eternal power in Godhead is clearly revealed in the things that are made and in our own conscience so that no one can say, Oh, I had no way of knowing what kind of God I should worship. Paul says they are without excuse. But now that the Lord himself has come. He has removed the possibility of anyone having any excuse. Light has come into the world. It is as if that we were living in a dark place, a dark place that was so dark and so black that we could not see. And it is certain that anytime you're in a dark place, what you look for most of all is some place where light is, where you can get some sort of perspective. If you're in a room and all of a sudden the lights are cut off, you're walking in this room, there's a lot of furniture there, as long as light is there, you can see where you're going. And you sort of wind yourself around with great agility and great alacrity and you'll not stomp your toe or anything, but the minute the lights go off, Your eyes do not focus, you stop and you wonder, where am I? What is the next step? Is there a chair there or isn't there a chair there? Dare I say, maybe you shuffle your feet just a little bit, don't move them too fast. If you move them too fast, you'll stomp your toe and you'll be hurt real bad. But then, someone opens the door, a crack of light comes in. Now you can see, perhaps it's just a silhouette, perhaps it's just a little bit here, but you begin to see the path. You can walk again. Everyone desires to have light in a dark place. Well, this world morally was the darkest place that can be imagined. It was utter abysmal Egyptian darkness and God sent great light, glorious light into the world. And there were those who would say, light? I don't see light. There is no light. And we see in 2 Corinthians 4, that the light that was the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, they could not see the light of that glory because the God of this world has blinded their minds. The Lord is come. Light has come into the world. It is a light that penetrated the darkness. All should be able to see it. If they were not so morally resistant to it, they would come to it. But anathema comes because the Lord is come. They are condemned. They love darkness rather than light. But if the proper translation is, Come, O Lord, or the Lord comes, then we also know that there is a certainty to this judgment. In the book of Jude, in verses 14 and 15, Jude establishes the picture for us of those who are ungodly and what will happen. He says, see the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of His holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way and of all of the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. And then in the text that was read for us earlier in the book of 2 Thessalonians, in chapter 1, we have this picture of the glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the middle of verse 7, this will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed." Oh, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes in his supreme glory, when He comes to be glorified in His holy people, as the sight of Him completes their sanctification, results in their glorification, when His work is now glorified to its full extent by the redemption of His people, and when they see Him and they marvel at Him and marvel at His beauty and their love for Him becomes complete, Oh, an infinite reversal of that is happening to those who have not loved the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, they will see for certain that they should have loved Him, but because they still do not have the principle of love in them, their hatred for Him, their fear of Him will increase at a pace that we cannot imagine. They will desire to be away from Him, and the wrath of this glorious One will be against them. punish them with fire. They will be shut out from His presence, blazing fire. His powerful angel will come. It will be a fearsome sight indeed, all because they have not loved the Lord. If any man loved not the Lord, anathema, the Lord comes. Come, O Lord. But what about those who do love? There in the first generation, there were many who had seen the Lord face to face, but as the apostles carried out the command of the Lord to go into all the world, they began to go into places where They had never seen anyone who had seen the Lord. And when the apostles preached to them and told them of these things, they had no opportunity of seeing the Lord. And yet, by the power of the Spirit, they believed, their hearts were changed, they came to love the Lord. And Peter says in verses 7 through 9 of his first letter, speaking of the trials that come, he says, These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. For you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. One thing that I think that is remarkable about this passage is the interchange between you love him, you believe in him. Even though you do not see him, you love him. Even though you've not seen him, you believe in him. To believe in the Lord is to love the Lord. Now, belief and love are not precisely the same thing. But you can't have love for the Lord without embracing the Lord and His completed work in faith. Oh, do you see the loveliness of the Lord? Do you see that He is worthy of your love? Do you see that His work is a glorious and marvelous and benevolent work that should draw forth the great admiration, the greatest admiration and love that you have? Do you see that you need Him? Does the glory of His person and His infinite condescension cause you to hate your sin and desire to know one who is like this Lord Jesus Christ? If there is that within you, if there is this beginning of love in your heart for who He is, then that is the foundation for faith. Embrace Him in faith. Do you claim? to embrace him in faith. And yet there is really not much admiration for him and for what he has done. There is not much excitement in your heart about when you read the scripture and describes to you the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means that he will come again. There is not any sympathy in your heart for what He has done. There is somehow no joy inexpressible, full of glory. When you contemplate the things of God, you say you believe in Him, but you do not love Him. It's impossible. If you love Him, believe in Him. If you believe in Him, then it's certain that you have loved Him. There's a hymn that says, Lord Jesus, I love Thee. I know Thou art mine. For Thee all the follies of sin I resign. My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou. If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, tis now. Let's bow for prayer together. Father, by the powerful working of your Spirit, bringing about that change that none but you can bring, none but your Spirit can bring, By performing that great work of quickening us while we're dead in trespasses and sins, we pray that You will work on the hearts of all of these tonight. If there are those who do not love You, we pray that the Spirit would show them Christ and reveal Him to their hearts, that they might embrace Him in love and then embrace Him in repentance and faith. Father, for those of us who do love You and who believe in You, we pray that You would help our unbelief. We pray that You would increase that sometimes that faint, very weak flame of love that is there, that you will kindle it anew, that it may flame up into a great fire of love for you. Lord, grant us this for Christ's sake, in whose name we pray. Amen.